A’s come back to beat Angels, take six-game lead in West

The A’s have had their share of unlikely wins the past week, but Sunday’s stood out – Jarrod Parker had his worst start since late April and the Oakland recently challenged offense had to fight back not once, but twice.

And fight they did, led by the man the A’s most need to heat up, Yoenis Cespedes. Cespedes drove in four runs and the A’s scored in double-digits for the first time in three weeks, downing the Angels 10-6 and taking a comfortable six-game lead in the AL West. The last time Oakland had a lead of six or more games before the end of July was in 1988.

“I didn’t for one minute think down 5-0 that we’re not going to come back and do something,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “It’s tough to come back from a five-run lead but these guys are pretty relentless.”

“We had to battle, and we made it happen,” said second baseman Eric Sogard, who also had three hits, drove in two and scored two.

Oakland is a season-high 19-games over .500 and the A’s are tied with Tampa Bay for the second best record in the league after taking three of four from the Angels. Second place Texas was shut out for the second game in a row on Sunday.

The Angels, who lost high-priced first baseman Albert Pujols to the DL for a torn foot ligament earlier in the day, are now 13 games out and in fourth place in the West, a game behind Seattle.

Cespedes had driven in only one run the entire rest of the month, and he had three RBIs over his previous 24 games combined. His double in the third snapped an 0-for-13 streak, and he entered the day batting .133 since the All-Star break.

“I’ve been working a lot, every single day to get the swing I got today, and I want to get my moments like I did last year,” Cespedes said, with Ariel Prieto interpreting, of his desire to get back to the success he had last season. The problem this season, he said, is simply a lack of consistency.

Cespedes said he didn’t feel good today until after his first at-bat, but “after that I started to feel comfortable at the plate.”

And now, does he believe he is starting to turn things around? “The way I feel today after the first at-bat, I expect that, yes,” Cespedes said.

Parker hadn’t allowed more than three runs in any of his past 13 starts, racking up a a 5-1 record and 2.39 ERA in that span. Sunday, he gave up six run, his most since April 25 – and he walked seven batters, a career high by two. He gave up four runs in the first inning, when he walked the first two batters of the game and the Angels batted around, and one in the second when Erick Aybar tripled and scored on a groundout. Aybar is now 9 for 14 with three walks lifetime vs. Parker.

That was the last hit Parker gave up, though, as he somehow made it into the sixth inning. He opened up that inning by allowing two walks, and Jesse Chavez supplanted him and gave up an RBI double to Aybar.

“He just had trouble getting in sync the first two innings,” Melvin said of Parker, whom he was one batter away from taking out early on. “There’s some definite perseverance out of him today.”

Parker said he didn’t feel smooth throughout his start, he was fighting himself all day. His arm slot was tough to find at times.

“I was kind of battling all day,” he said. “I felt like I let our guys down today by walking guys, that keeps them on their heels.”

The A’s had tied it up in the interim, making Parker’s last two walks all the more problematic. Oakland got three runs in the third off Tommy Hanson, with an RBI double by Sogard and a two-run double by Cespedes – he’d driven in only one run the entire rest of July.

In the fifth, Brandon Moss had an RBI groundout, and with two outs and two on, Cespedes hit a sky-high pop to center that Mike Trout lost. The ball fell in between Trout and Kole Calhoun, an RBI single for Cespedes.

So the A’s trailed 6-5 going into the bottom of the sixth, and super-slumping Seth Smith (0 for his past 28) walked to open the inning. Stephen Vogt doubled him in with a flare to center field that Trout couldn’t get to quickly enough – he was playing deep.

That tied the game and then Sogard smacked a single to center off J.C. Gutierrez to give Oakland the lead.

“That’s something our team does well, we pick each other up,” Parker said. “Today, it was huge and it was everybody. I had a pretty (poor) day and they picked me up. That kind of makes us who we are.”

With one out, Jed Lowrie doubled into the corner in right; Sogard scored and Lowrie wound up at third on an error by Calhoun. Kevin Jepsen then walked Josh Donaldson, and Moss singled in Lowrie. Cespedes followed by ripping a double to right center to push in another run. Cespedes, who hadn’t run particularly hard on his early dropped-flyball single, looked as if he were heading to third but he had to put on the brakes with Moss still at the base.

Melvin said of Cespedes’ failure to get to second on his pop-up hit, “He didn’t run 100 percent but the ball bounced right up and they threw it into second, he was halfway there. It’s not like he jogging, he was running some. … It’s got to be a steady pace and he was running well enough where I was OK with it.”

It was the first three-hit day for Cespedes since June 4, and just his third three-hit day of the season.

“It’s huge,” Parker said of Cespedes picking up the pace. “He’s a big part of the team. And Mossy, Red (Josh Reddick), so many guys have yet to play their best baseball.”

Sogard also had three hits, and he has been the A’s most reliable hitter since the break. He has a seven-game hitting streak, and he’s batting .407 in that stretch.

“After the break, I hit the reset button and kind of went back to that spring-training swing I had, not trying to do too much,” Sogard said.

“You kind of get that feeling with him that he had near the end of spring, like he’s going to hit a line drive somewhere,” Melvin said. “He seems to be right in the middle of everything right now.”

The A’s are 7-0 when Stephen Vogt starts at catcher.

“What I always said is this is a team, not one or two guys,” Cespedes said. “It’s 25 people. It’s the whole team to be winning.”

“This team is picking each other up all the way around,” Sogard said.

Seth Smith extended his career-high hitless streak to 0-for-29, and Donaldson also remained in a funk; he’s o for his past 16. He provided his usually terrific defense, though, with diving stops to his left (in the third) and his right (in the fifth) on Sunday. He’s probably not going to win a Gold Glove, given the Manny Machado Show in Baltimore, but he’s certainly deserving of one. A tie, maybe?

Parker tied an Oakland record with his sixth consecutive no decision; Chavez got the win in relief. Parker’s seven walks were the most by an A’s pitcher since Trevor Cahill on June 14, 2011, vs. the Royals.